Pebble is a watch that uses Bluetooth to connect to smart phones; it displays emails, texts, the time, and more on the wearer’s wrist. It was proposed as a hypothetical idea; while the Pebble founders had made watches before, they had never made the smart watch they pitched the Kickstarter community.

We don’t want to say anything this time until we’re 100% sure

The creators of Pebble initially told its supporters their watches would be available in September. But two months after the campaign ended, Pebble found it impossible to ship the 85,000 pre-ordered watches on time. The creators delayed the delivery date indefinitely.

In all other aspects, its founders have tried to be as transparent with their backers as possible. It gives them regular status updates on Pebble’s blog and the founders have participated in “ask me anything” events on Reddit.

“If you want a watch, you can go buy a watch,” Kickstarter co-founder Yancey Strickler tells Pepitone. “People turn to the analogs of consumer behavior, as if this is a Wal-Mart online store. Kickstarter isn’t a perfect analog to anything like that. It’s something new.”

“When we go see a movie, we don’t think about how long the post-production took,” he says. “We don’t look at the Sistine Chapel and think, ‘This took four years,’ or however long it took.”

He agrees Kickstarter needs to address the possibility of a creator not sufficiently fulfilling his or her initial promise, though.

Kickstarter successes like Pebble highlight a few other problems the platform still needs to address.

But, if founders and backers can survive their viral Kickstarter campaigns, the experience is worth it.

“It adds a proper legacy to the brand,” Flint and Tinder’s CEO Jake Bronstein tells us. “By day one, I had created a consumer base of 5,000-plus people who were enthusiastic about the product. I don’t think it would have been the same if our first customers had bought our product in a box on a shelf.”